Seen at the Festival of the Tree

Saturday, 3 November 2007

This is what one of yesterday's pumpkins got turned into - yummy! I made up the recipe as I went along in the end - plenty of home grown garlic, onions, fresh herbs from the garden (there's a clue in the picture showing the main one used this time round), plus vegetable stock and black pepper to taste. It was simmered for 30 minutes and then whizzed together using my hand blender. Slurp - loverly.

3 comments:

Well, I come from the make it up as you go along school of cookery when it comes to making soup. It's a lot of do xyz until it "looks right" and lots of tasting along the way. This approach works particularly well alongside having an allotment as we eat a lot of "allotment soup" at weekends i.e. whatever's in glut at the time.

However, I'll try and some some detail to the outline sketched thus far. The pumpkins in the picture weighed about 2.5 pounds each (sorry for you metric minded UK readers out there, you'll have to convert this for yourself). I roasted it whole in a medium hot oven for 30 minutes until it was squishy - this is particularly important with Turks Turban as they are almost impossible to cut when raw. I then cut up the pumpkin, removing the skin and seeds, leaving nice big chunks of pure flesh for the soup.

Meanwhile, I'd cut up a large onion, plus chopped, peeled garlic to taste - I'm leaving this bit variable as different people like different amounts of garlic, but at least 2 large cloves are needed. This all goes into a large pan on the stove. I then sweated these in a large glug of extra virgin olive oil until the mixture's soft and transparent. In goes a couple of pints of vegetable stock - I cheat here and use a stock cube - this also means you don't need to add any salt to the soup. Add the pumpkin, ground black pepper and herbs to taste and bring everything up to a rolling boil. Herbwise, I always use bay leaves (2-4 large ones to suit your taste), in the picture I'd also used about 2 tablespoons of fresh rosemary. On other ocassions I've used any combination of thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary - whatever is growing lushly in the garden at the time.

Immediately the soup is on the boil, Cover and turn it down to a slow simmer for 30-40 minutes. Then blend to a smooth soup using a hand blender. If you like a spicier soup, leave the bay leaves in, otherwise hunt for them and fish them out! You don't need to thicken the soup in any way - if it's a bit on the thick side add a little more water and herbs. If it's the right consistency, but tastes a bit "thin", add more pepper and herbs. If it's a bit watery, simmer for a bit longer with the pan lid off until the soup's reduced to the right consistency. I sometimes grind up a tablespoon of coriander (cilantro) seed to add at this point to give a nice spicy, orangey variation to the taste.

Serve with warmed bread and enjoy! A nice bread recipe is coming along in a future post.

This should give you enough soup for 4-6 people, or for 2 weekend lunches for NAH and me!

Help me to help you: If you're having problems leaving comments, contact me using the Contact Form at the foot of this page, or via vegplotting at gmail dot com, or @malvernmeet if a quick tweet is more convenient for you. That way I can get things sorted.

Comments aiming to link back and give credence to commercial websites will be composted!

Sorry - anonymous comments are disabled currently owing to continued problems with spammers.